


You Might remember the taste

by RandomK



Category: BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games)
Genre: Adam - Freeform, Addiction, Choices, Gen, Little Sisters, POV Second Person, Spoilers, ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:21:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24816760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomK/pseuds/RandomK
Summary: Jack makes a decision about his future
Kudos: 7





	You Might remember the taste

**Author's Note:**

> "I came to this place to build the impossible. You came to rob what you could never build. A Hun, gaping at the gates of Rome. Even the air you breathe is sponged from my account. Well, breathe deep ... so later you might remember the taste."

It would be so easy. 

All you need to do is accept what is offered to you. Held by small hands and slender wrists. They saved you. They offer the city to you freely. 

All you can think of, is how hungry you are. 

Not for food, which has always felt like a fleeting source of fuel. This is deeper, more primal. A craving. 

ADAM

You are made of ADAM. It pumps alongside the blood in your veins, nourishes you, consumes you. The only constant, in your world filled with lies. 

"So far away from your family, from your friends, from everything you ever loved. But, for some reason, you like it here."

Your father, dead by your hand. Your creator, dead by your intent. Your mother, long 

destroyed by both of them. 

"You feel something you can't quite put your finger on."

What is there to go back to, on the surface? 

A lighthouse? A rescue that might not come? 

A life made of lies? 

"Think about it for a second, and maybe the word will come to you: Nostalgia."

You could stay. You could lead Rapture. Who else is left to do it, now that you have killed all their leaders, and anyone who had influence? Rapture is yours, by both birth and conquest. You have Ryan's genetic key, the most important Key here. You have total control. 

What has the surface to offer, in comparison? 

You could destroy it so easily. 

"Riots in the streets they say! But this is the time for leadership. Action must be taken against the smugglers."

You have nothing holding you back. No lies, no codes, no trappings of family. You have lost everything. You are on the edge. 

You have a choice now. 

It would be so easy, to take Rapture, to take control, to take all the ADAM of the little sisters, for you, only you, and rise, create the utopia they were looking for, one of your own design. To have everything. All the secrets of Rapture, all yours. 

This room smells tantalizingly of ADAM, leaking from the needle wounds. Fontaine. 

Needles they still have...

And maybe, if you hadn't resisted temptation before, there wouldn't be a choice. Maybe, if you had taken the easy option, you would already be eating the slugs within their bellies, gluttony unresisted in the face of temptation. 

Only practice stops you now. 

They look at you trusting, while you are at your lowest, crashing after a long, and emotionally draining journey. It would be easy, so easy, to sate the hunger. To open them up, under your enhanced strength. Pry away the key, sate your cravings. 

You can see the path before you, and it would be effortless to follow. It's tempting. 

"A man chooses!"

But it would not be a choice, anymore. You have no love for Ryan, but all of his talks about choices, have stayed with you, possibly through repetition. 

A slave obeys! OBEY!!"

The only choice you have made down here, the only true choice, was a choice that was not an order, but a request. Save the little sisters. 

You chose restraint. You have made that choice over and over again. That practice is the only thing that stops you now, from betraying their trust. 

If you stay in Rapture, how many times will you have to make that choice again? How easy will it be to fall into the pattern of becoming yet another ruler who takes away choices from others? Where would you stop? 

You wouldn't. 

You know that you would go on and on, until there is no corner of the earth untouched by Rapture's war.

It would be so easy. 

If you did what was easy,it wouldn't be a choice anymore. 

You could leave. Go to the surface, with the sisters, and the key, and all the knowledge tucked away inside your head. 

You would know where Rapture is, and what it does, and have the sisters. Just in case, you need to reconsider. 

You go to take the key, and she flinches, as if guessing the directions of your thoughts. 

You have made a choice. And you will make it again, and again. 

You crouch, and this time, you meet her at eye level. 

**Author's Note:**

> The ending of a game with a lot of talk about Choice, had strict parameters for what determined the ending. Are you a friend or a harvester?  
> Looking back, that's the only choice, Jack and the player made, that mattered to anyone except Jack.  
> So when I wrote this, I wanted it to be a choice for him, a tempting one. A choice to turn down the power Rapture offers, a hard one, whose struggle wasn't shown in the ending.  
> Regardless of whether he saved the little sisters out of guilt, after harvesting them initially, his ending is the same. The only one that makes a meaningful difference, is if he resisted the opportunities for easy ADAM, for the promise of better rewards later. A conscious choice to turn away from the easy path of power.


End file.
